


A Family Again

by orphan_account



Series: Discord Sans [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Child Death, Depression, M/M, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 11:38:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7713535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A much more recent post from the ongoing RP. The context is explained in the first paragraph, and the second section is the created universe. By this point, Sans and Mettaton were married after Mettaton had remembered him throughout the timelines, remembering the way they were. The Mettaton roleplayer chose the font name for the child, who is a small, purple ghost. Sans is the one in control of the timeline since his Determination overpowered that of Frisk, who is now MIA after he wrenched control from them. Once again, criticism is welcomed if it is constructive, and enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Family Again

The battle was lost almost as quickly as it had started. The Hatefallen parasite was spreading fast. People were dead or dying. Even the incorporeal weren’t immune to it. A soul parasite, Hatefallen fed on the very essence of the being. Monsters, humans, all fell to it. The afflicted spiralled into a state of pure hatred, Hatefallen causing them to lose all their emotions but sadness or anger as it fed. Waterborne at first, then transmitted through magic. Magic, the culmination of a monster’s soul essence, the one thing most of them had. Healing magic, offensive magic, all of it spread the parasite. By the time they knew what they were dealing with it was too late.

Sans had watched his friends succumb to the parasite. Twisted by their own hatred, they had struck him. He never succumbed. The Determination in his soul protected him from it, the parasite couldn’t take hold. Sans was watching the world burn around him. His husband was away on business, his daughter was at home with him. He could only pray for Mettaton’s safety. As the days passed, Sans noticed something different about Mettaton during their video calls. It didn’t take long to realise what. Mettaton had been infected. He had watched his friends, and now his husband succumb to Hatefallen. That was the final straw. Sans had been holding out, waiting for a cure. He knew what would happen. He knew how this worked. He had tried to find other options, anything that would stop him from doing the one thing he promised himself he wouldn’t do, but now Mettaton was in danger. Mustering all the Determination he could, Sans shouted one last anguished “fuck you” to the world before slamming his hand down over the reset button hovering before him.

Nothing. The world didn’t reset. Frantically, Sans hit the button over and over, becoming more panicked with each. It wasn’t working. He didn’t have the Determination that he had the first time. There was only one person close enough who might be able to help. The one who was helping him research the parasite. Sans teleported to the basement of his house in Snowdin, where Gaster was still working. Trying to calm down, Sans explained. Gaster stared at him in silence for a moment, before explaining that there was one final option. A monster can’t absorb a monster soul, but the determination of one soul can be imparted to another, and Gaster knew how. He warned Sans that it would have grave consequences, but it was all they could do to save everyone. With a silent exchange of nods, Gaster used his Determination to alter the very code of the universe. He merged his line of code with Sans’, changing it to give Sans his Determination. Sans turned to see the reset button appearing behind him in response to the newfounds Determination, but turning back to face Gaster once he was finished hit Sans with horrific shock. His father had dusted. Sans wasted no time in pressing the reset button to bring him back. The world shifted, and everything reset. Sans’ position was unchanged, but as he turned, expecting to see that Gaster had reset, but saw the same pile of dust. He fell to his knees, tears hitting the concrete floor below him. Gaster had corrupted his code by changing it, the reset removing his consciousness from the universe. This time, he wasn’t in any void. Gaster was gone. With a heavy heart, Sans had to finish this. As Sans left, Gaster’s dust was caught in the wind blowing through the door to the basement, carried outside.

The parasite was native, it was reset to its origin. Everyone was cured. Sans had once again saved everyone. This time, he was able to stop it before it started. He teleported to the surface and killed the parasite before it could infect anyone. He had thought he understood the reset. That through his Determination, the one who didn’t exist at the point in time that the reset would drag them back to would be saved. Sans returned home, expecting his daughter to be there. She wasn’t. After the initial shock and panic of thinking she was erased, Sans entered the save menu to find her waiting for him. Her code was corrupted, she had suffered the same fate as Gaster because of his Determination. Perhaps it was better, at least Sans could care for her in the save menu.

Mettaton was the first agenda. He had remembered before, so surely he remembered now. That optimism quickly melted into disbelief and anguish when Sans found him. Mettaton didn’t remember. His memories had been reset to this point. Sans didn’t know where he was in the reset, so he couldn’t preserve his memories. The memoires that Sans had collected and the note from Mettaton himself would be enough to convince him, and their daughter who didn’t exist would be more than enough to help him remember, so Sans had a backup. As Sans reached for the memoires, his world collapsed further. They weren’t there. The photographs, the note, all gone. He had no proof of timelines past, no proof of the love they shared, nothing he could convince Mettaton that they were married with besides the ring on his own finger. Sans had to find another way to make Mettaton remember, and care for his daughter at the same time. Elsewhere, Gaster’s dust shifted. Gaster was gone, but his code was still there, albeit corrupted. Interlaced with Sans’ code, a new entity was born.

Sans’ hesitation about resetting was for a good reason. He knew what would happen. He knew that resetting created another universe that had never reset. What he didn’t know was that the timeline copy of himself didn’t simply disappear. Somewhere across time and space, Sans broke down as he realised that he couldn’t reach the save file, the problem wasn’t Determination. He couldn’t reset. They had lost.

 

Sans had to watch the world burn around him. Still immune to Hatefallen, he watched everyone he cared about become ghosts of their former selves, eventually dying. Even those evacuated eventually began to succumb, it was spreading through their barriers via those in denial. Sans never evacuated. When he found out that his daughter had been infected too, there was no point. He was immune. His brother was dead, his husband was infected and slowly changing, and now his daughter had been infected. What hope was there? Sans cared for Mistral alone as she deteriorated, hoping that Mettaton would come home and he could be with his family in their final moments. Video calls with Mettaton had stopped weeks ago, Hatefallen had twisted him. When news reached Sans that Mettaton had died to it, his final hope vanished. His Determination failed him. The Determination dissipated, leaving Sans with nothing but a daughter who was slowly succumbing to Hatefallen, and the inevitable loomed over him like the dark shroud of Death’s robe. Sans only slipped deeper into a state of depression. All he did was care for Mistral. He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep. The rest of the hotel was empty, all its inhabitants either fled or died, and the surrounding houses were abandoned. They were truly alone.

When his daughter was in the deepest stages of Hatefallen, Sans knew it was the end. As his daughter lay dying in his arms, Sans allowed himself to be hit by her magic. He could have dodged it as he always did, but this time he didn’t want to. Everything he cared about was gone. What was the point? As the parasite latched onto his soul, he kissed his daughter on the forehead, watching her close her eyes one last time. Her dust slipped through his fingers.

Walking away from the hotel with a jar of dust, Sans didn’t look back. It was too painful. He didn’t know where he was going, but at this point he didn’t care. He would eventually be the last to succumb to Hatefallen, becoming twisted and filled with hatred. The parasite had won, and Sans had reached acceptance. For days he walked, and everywhere he went there were abandoned buildings and ghost towns. Human bodies often littered the streets where they had either killed each other in hatred or died to the parasite, and in previously more densely-populated areas by monsters, the air was dusty and dry. None of this shocked Sans. He couldn’t feel shock any more. Everywhere he looked he saw Mettaton. The human corpses became Mettaton lying in the street. The neon signs were the signs on the hotel. Every song still playing in the empty streets was their song. When he tripped over a body and saw Mettaton lying on the ground at his feet, all he could feel was numb. Hatefallen had taken all of his emotions besides despair, and by now despair was numbness. This was just another human.

…But it wasn’t. When the image didn’t fade into a human body, Sans realised it wasn’t in his mind. This was the empty body of his husband. The soul container was dark, but a thin layer of dust lined the inside. Mettaton had died in his body. Sans sat next to the body, stroking its hair and crying for what felt like hours, before lying down, cuddling closely against it with Mistral’s dust between them, and he waited for Hatefallen to take him.

At least they were a family again.


End file.
